• by Tom Hespos , July 13, 2004

Most brand managers I've known over the years have kept a very close eye on the average age of their brand's typical consumer. For many brands, an aging brand is one that is taking steps toward the grave, and an inability to connect with younger consumers is an eventual death sentence.

Why do mass market brands try their best to forge brand loyalty at a young age? There are two main reasons: 1) A brand that appeals to older folks can count on less revenue over the lifetime of the consumer, simply due to attrition. 2) Consumers tend to form brand loyalties at an early age, and once loyalty is cemented, it becomes harder for a competitor to encourage switching behavior.

When the Internet enters the brand landscape, it raises some interesting challenges. While all ranges of age groups are represented on the Internet, the manner of Internet usage tends to vary widely between the younger set and those who are older. Anecdotally, both my Dad and I are avid users of the web and email, but I'm more likely to turn to the Internet first for product purchases than my Dad might be. Old habits die hard, and while my Dad might buy things online, he'll tend toward looking in the traditional channels first, like retail or the Yellow Pages or other things he's used to. Every once in a while, he'll have a "Why didn't I think of that?" moment when he asks me about the best place to buy Product X and I suggest, "Did you try the web?" Simply put, he's not used to looking to the 'net first, while it's second nature to me.

This anecdote is to suggest that behavior is what marketers should be looking at, rather than demographics, when considering the ramifications of brand aging in a media landscape that includes e-commerce and Internet-based resources. The hows of category and brand interaction are just as important, if not more so, than the whos or the whats.

I recently checked out an article on eMarketer about online's share of travel booking revenue and was thinking about how that category will age over time. While PhoCusWright paints an encouraging picture that the online channel will be responsible for one-third of overall travel bookings by 2006, one can't help but wonder how the behavior of the typical consumer in that category will change over time, given old habits engrained in older folks and new ones being formed by younger consumers who are booking their own travel for the first time in their lives. Many of these youngsters would likely scoff at the idea of using a travel agent, while those who have used travel agents for years may not be willing to consider booking travel any other way.

It's no surprise, then, that according to the eMarketer article, travel agencies are among the subcategories within travel that eMarketer says are "dipping their toe into the market." (Hotels and tour companies are the other two that fit this description, according to the article.) Notice how these are the subcategories where travel agents can add the most value? Meanwhile, the article states, airlines, rental car companies and rail travel companies are the subcategories driving the explosion in the market.

But what happens when the old habits leech out of the market as consumers age? Indeed, the eMarketer article says growth will continue, "As young people used to e-commerce become prime travel bookers." This sentence caught my eye because it not only addresses the aging of the category, but also how a familiarity with e-commerce will likely contribute to changing behavior in the category.

Category aging isn't enough by itself to spell doom for, say, travel agents. But behaviors and habits, such as looking to the Internet for travel ideas and bookings before other media, may do so. These behaviors will gradually replace the dominant ones in the category over time, and it is this behavioral shift that travel agents, tour companies and the like need to be concerned about.